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When Children Are Molested
Susan Adams
9/l7/09
Article Objective; To acquaint readers
with the dynamics of child molestation and to provide some
guidelines for handling it.
Summary: Many more children than it is
commonly thought are molested each year in the United States, and
elsewhere. The molesting may occur between a child and an aging
family member, between the child and an extended family member or
close relative, or between the child and a family friend. When the
news of the molesting is learned by the other members of the family,
it is often met with shock, disbelief, and/or high drama.
This does not serve the child well and
serves to create secondary problems to the molesting which would be
less likely to occur if the incident were handled calmly.
Molesting of children is far more common
than it might be thought. This breach of boundaries often occurs in
an alcohol environment because the alcohol serves to relax
boundaries between people.
Sometimes a child might be touched
inappropriately by a grandparent who has become confused with age.
Sometimes a family friend steps over the line, often fueled by
alcohol.
Sometimes the perpetrator is a relative
distant or close.
In any case, the touching occurs and the
child is in the position of telling a competent adult or keeping the
secret.
If the family is functioning well, that
is, the adults are behaving like adults and the children are clearly
being care taken, the child tells because he knows that the adults
will handle the problem and he knows that something has ocurred that
is inappropriate. This is true unless the child is very young and
not yet talking or communicating meaningfully.
It is at this point, when the child
tells the competent adults that further damage may or may not
happen. Unfortunately, many adults become so horror -stricken that
they cannot react rationally. If they carry on and rant and rave
about the obscenity of it all, then the child may decide that he has
been truly damaged and victimized. This evolves to the possibility
of using the victim position for gain. That position may stick.
This is particularly true if the adults become dramatic about the
event.
Rather, it would be useful to hear the
news from the child with calm and logic. The adult(s) inquire about
what has actually happened. It is then explained to the child that
he is correct in telling about what has happened. It should not
have happened. Grandpa or the friend or whomever is confused. The
adult goes on to explain that these parts of the body feel good when
touched--by anyone. However, the child is too young for such
touching and that one day the "right" person will come along and the
touching will be pleasant and appropriate. It is just not
appropriate now and the adult will take steps to protect the child
so that this does not ever happen again.
The parent then makes sure the child can
lock his door and makes sure the child is NEVER alone with the
perpetrator again. Thus, the molesting stops and the child is
protected, and life goes back to normal with no catastrophe marked.
The adults in the family then confront
whomever has breached the boundary and steps are taken to insure the
child's safety. That may or may not include the authorities
depending on the nature of WHO has molested the child and the
surrounding circumstances.
Let's look at the other scenario in
which the adults, the parents, are not acting like adults. Someone
in the family is depressed or alcoholic, or angry and explosive, or
in some other ways does not look like an adult. Here, the child
does NOT tell for fear of being blamed or not believed, or for fear
of giving the parents something else to worry about.
In this case, the child does not get
protected. There is no one to normalize the event and stop the
molesting. Therefore, it may continue with the child winding up
feeling guilty and bad.
There is a third scenario in which the
child does tell and is believed by one parent and not the other.
Usually when this happens, the rejecting parent is behaving in that
manner out of guilt for not knowing or stopping the abuse.
The damage to the child is still an
issue because the child has been accused of the crime of lying.
This hurts trust and the sense of being protected.
What Happens Then?
When the child does not get protected
damage occurs. The child has met an unfriendly world at an early
age and trust is affected. People may become suspect. The child
closes himself off-partly to protect himself from others and partly
to protect them from him since he feels that he is bad and dirty.
He protects his secret. Many adults, molested as children, have
never told anyone. The secret comes out if they wind up in the
office of a perceptive therapist.
Children who have been molested usually
(I have not known one who did not) grow up into adults who lack
self-worth. They fear speaking up for their own rights because
their feelings have been stomped upon as children. Someone comes
along who is big and powerful and walks on the feelings of the child
by saying that what 'I" want is more important than what you want or
feel. So the child learns to back down and keep quiet for fear of
bringing on conflict which he hasn't the skills to handle.
The other issue is that the emotional
abandonment that goes with handling such an occurrence alone gets
set in the child's brain. Going forward, everything unpleasant
feels like more molesting even if it is not. By this, I mean, that
going forward the child feels that his feelings are being stepped on
even if they are not and he feels powerless to do anything about it.
If the molesting is of a more serious
nature-if it occurs between the child and a parent or stepparent,
and if it continues then over time, there is another issue. The
child gets elevated into an adult role by protecting the molestation
secret. He or she keeps the secret with the person who is doing the
molesting. In fact, everyone who is out of the secret becomes
unavailable to the child. This robs the child of support from
anyone who is not in on the secret which is everyone but the
molester.. The child basically loses his childhood and may grow into
an adult who protects others inappropriately and seeks relationships
that are unbalanced in which he is always in the caretaker position
or in the role of being helpless and needing the caretaking. These
relationships have a poor prognosis because they are unbalanced and
wear out the caretaker over time.
Molested kids who have not been
protected carry aspects of depression as well. They may seek
anti-depressants as adults and they may be prone to physical
ailments. This latter may well be the result of carrying the
anxiety of the secret which wears away at the immune system. It is
not so much disease that kills us, but the anxiety that causes the
disease that kills.
So, the children who tell when they are
molested and receive protection and calm generally grow up just fine
without problems with intimacy. They can be normal, non-secretive
adults capable of partnering and having fulfilling sex lives.
For the children who don't tell or don't
get believed, the problems can be multiple.
These kids tend to grow to adulthood
without really maturing. They want caretaking because they didn't
get it or they look over-competent and controlling. This latter is
a result of not having adults to depend upon. The over-control is a
form of protection since bad things happened when the child was not
in control. Control and emotional abandonment go together. The
former is to prevent the latter, but it doesn't work.
Sometimes the more resilient adults find
themselves in therapy offices and the story comes out. Is it too
late?
At this point it becomes important to
find out if anyone is left in the family who can be told.
I do not pressure these clients into
doing anything. However, if they volunteer the information there
are still things that can be done. Remember, trust is a big issue
here so there must be lots of trust between therapist and client and
this can take a long time.
However, the job of the therapy would be
to help the client tell the significant others in the family. The
client needs to find out what the mother or father or both-or aunts,
uncles, older siblings, would have done had they known. The issue
is still one of protection. If we get this far, the family members
apologize in a heartfelt manner for what the victim has endured. The
family also apologizes for whatever was going on that rendered them
unavailable or rendered them to APPEAR to be unavailable to the
victim at the time. Confronting the molester if he is still around
is ideal but difficult to accomplish.
Molestation victims tend to see the
molester as large and powerful, almost forever. The purpose of the
confrontation for the victim is to see how immature and powerless
they really are.
In summary, it is not the molestation,
itself that causes the damage to children.. If it is short-term
and if the child tells and gets protected, everyone can move on.
The damage occurs when the reactions to the news are dramatic and
catastrophic or when the child keeps the secret.
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